WARNING: Use of Explicit language.
Updates to the blog have taken a temporary hit. I've started studying again, so they are coming out a bit slower but still hope to have new material uploaded at least once per month.
The main novel is based on the sometimes mysterious, fighter come financier, Davis Lockyer.
Several other plotlines reflect a shared timeline based on other denizens of the Sydney Finance industry.

Friday, December 23, 2011

The Ninja Master is sitting silently, apparently meditating,
in the stone alcove of the small temple that is part of this fortress. Built
into the side of a mountain, it had originally been a Buddhist temple that
taught gung fu to the locals. His gaze is fixed on a large wooden carving of an
encircled hexagram. Yellow smoke pours from a candle lit directly below the
wall piece.

His mind is blank the spirit on his shoulder taps him lightly and he feels the
touch like a man standing at the centre of an earthquake. The touch is heavy,
the reverberations almost too much to control. As they settle his mind follows
the powerful spirit. A silver trail like a cord of thick rope chases away in
the distance. It is the way he imagines himself when travelling in his spirit
body.

He meets the ancient master at the place they always do,
atop Hung Kwong Hai mountain in central china. Amongst these mountains there is
a hidden temple, the final earthly abode of Blue Tiger’s ancient master. Both
men now sit opposite each other, choosing to float cross legged one metre in
the air. Red light leaked from the Ninja Master’s eyes, a similar purple glow
from the ancient ones.

The two of them spirit talk.

“How will you get this LU-bomb into America?” The ancient one enquired.

“Where they least suspect it, through legitimate shipping channels. Crate it up
in a standard shipping container. Refrigerated so the uranium in the bomb
doesn’t show up with an unusual thermal signature. We’ll leverage contacts in
the North-West so we expedite its movement through customs and onto a truck.
From there it’s a couple of hours drive to a disused garage in lower
Manhattan.Ground zero will be the yard
out the front of the shop.” Said the Ninja Master.

“Aren’t you worried that customs will open the shipping container at some
point?”

“It’s a risk, but the reality is that they only open one in ten.Of course you’re right in that they are the
biggest risk to this operation. That’s why we have invested significantly in
insuring there are plenty of officials on the take. It wasn’t hard, the usual
approaches were made; money first, dirty secrets second, family if they turned
out to be a fucking priest.”

“When does it arrive?”

“It arrives on the 27th of June, and should have cleared customs and
be in place by the 4th of July. Two days from now.”

“Good. Good. As I have asked you before though, do you want to poke the most
powerful tiger in the world, straight in the eyeball? Make sure you understand
the consequences of each action exactly. You must now realise they will come
after you with everything. What are you going to do then?”

“And if they do? Blue Tiger are ninjas; we will just blend back into the
shadows, waiting for the shit storm to fly right by us. The best they can do is
wipe out all numerous front operations; delink us from our local markets in HK,
Singapore and Taiwan. Our “puppets of state” strategy from three years ago
worked out well. Spies in the US state department have discovered they still
think our head quarters are at the old location. Lok Fung Ng, and his second
man, Shi Te Tang do a convincing job of issuing our instructions.”

“So we have a proxy to bear the brunt of the inevitable attack that will
follow. Of course you do not honestly believe that the US will not go after us because
we are located inside China? They will hunt down and destroy everything they
can find. You are talking about civilian casualties on a massive scale. If they
want they could even use it as an excuse to start a war with China. A war that
neither of country wants, and which America cannot afford.”

“Of course, all those things are possible, but then this was never about trying
to blow up America. This is about an insurance policy. This is about our
endgame for the people of Somalia. This is the last piece of the puzzle to
gaining the political power and legitimacy that our clan craves.”

“Hmmm, as you say an insurance policy then. So explain to me again, in what way
can alerting the Americans to the existence of a nuclear bomb on their
doorstep, possibly achieve that?”

“We are going to tell them there is one. We’ll even hang the customs guys out
to dry for proof. We won’t tell them where its located. Just show them some video
of the bomb, and a video of the good scientist that made it talking about how
it could wipe out half their eastern seaboard cities.”

“The Americans will be hamstrung initially. In the short-term they will be
unable to act against us. This will certainly up the ante, and of course you must
also realise that there will be no hiding once this starts? They will not stop,
day and night until they believe that every last Blue Tiger clan member is
wiped out. We must act swiftly and leverage the power of the situation that is
presented to us.”

“Exactly! In reality the bomb will be a dud. The “LU” crystal will never leave
Somalia. Construction of a massive power station capable of supplying all their
needs, will give Blue Tiger social legitimacy in this country. We cannot exist
within China alone. The party is deluded each year they grow bolder with
radical elements. The socially progressive faction that has driven China to
greatness is now subservient to factions that are driven by a level of greed
that will see the country returned to the twisted oligopolies of the past.”

“So why not go build this somewhere else where a government can soak up the
massive capital expenditure? Why Somalia? It’s a war zone and a famine state.”

“That’s exactly why we chose Somalia. The mood of public opinion. By the time
the world see’s the “good” we are doing, the Americans will be unable to act.
Until then we need the L-Bomb as insurance.”

Level 2 of the Power Station, 20:00:02, Northern Mogadishu.

Much later, several floors higher, and one hundred bombs
later our intrepid adventurers were gliding in to the main turbine room number
two. This was the last of the rooms on this level with a significant heat
signature. Beyond was the main entrance to the building, a complex corridor of
mesh wiring, barbed wire wrapped around large stakes, five inch steel blast
doors and enough semtex to blow the shit out of half the city.

The message was clear enough, the place was booby trapped to the hilt. The only
question was what message? The chances of anything recognisable being left within
the blast zone was remote at best. It almost seemed to the men that the
terrorists were testing them. The only viable entrance was the one they had
chosen, the one that they had found out about.

What if they hadn’t found out about it at all? What if the bastards wanted them
to find the tunnel, take the route less trodden, to what purpose?If they had gone for a full frontal assault
there would have been no bodies to hold triumphantly in front of the screaming
masses. No evidence of American interference. No the options were limited at
best; provide a suitable explanation to the government forces in control of the
city, or if things went to plan...

No time to think the team were moving within the final room now. The devices
instantly seemed more sophisticated. At a command from Aimee both men froze.
One of the Americans had spotted a tell on the far wall that strangely was not
registering with the suits analysis. A small dark protrusion now un-mistakable,
had earlier escaped detection in the field sweep performed with an extended
robotic arm prior to entering the room. Suddenly red laser light filled the
room. A grid erupted silently in the air. The two men stood helplessly as the
lasers crisscrossed their position. Oddly none of the neon tripwires
intersected the men’s positions, coincidence or not? Or not thought Dusty.

“Commander” Dusty eye texted to Aimee, “We appear to be in a spot of bother.
Nothing to worry about should be out of it in a Jiffy.”

“Don’t move a muscle, either of you.” Aimee looked worriedly
back at the Captain of the SAS who was sitting cross-legged next to her right
shoulder on the flat blue roof. “They won’t do anything stupid will they
Captain?”

“Not on your life Commander” the Captain replied formally. “What
do you suggest we do next?”

“I don’t like it, but I think we have very few choices at
this point. I want you to lead the rest of the SAS into position outside the
door to the second turbine room. We need to disable that sensor, whatever it
is, and clear that room. Analysis seems to indicate that the LU crystal is
coming from the centre of the room at best twenty metres from their current position.
We cannot risk allowing it to slip through our fingers.”

“I understand Ma’am. Ghost squad, get ready.” He said it
more for the benefit of the Americans that were not currently looking over
their ePads.

On each device the SAS suits were showing a computer
generated assault plan. The descent time, position of entry (via the hole that
Easy-E had cut earlier) landing spot, and path to door were all shown in
exacting detail. Total time for fast descent entry eight seconds. The first SAS
soldier had already deployed a grapple next to the manhole cut by Easy. He didn’t
check, he just latched a rope with a self locking carabineer and jumped through
the hole. The next man followed so closely he looked like he was jumping on the
head of his colleague. The captain went last stepping gracefully from the
ledge, into the abyss below.

The team landed and deployed in seven and half seconds,
simulation be damned. Once in position they waited for the order to begin
disabling the room, starting with the strange black sensor. There Captain calmly
ducked low then sprang at the open doorway. He executed two perfect somersaults,
and then to his credit nailed an Olympic level landing to finish in the square
of laser trip lights that surrounded the section of wall with the embedded
device. He rose and immediately deployed the XO series arm given to him as
squad leader. The arm extended over the device, active micro probes extended further
if by mere fractions of an inch. Each probe transmitted live imaging data in a
relay program. That program contacted a controller algorithm which in turn
loaded a deactivation search protocol. Six seconds later the probes retreated
having found a way to turn this thing off. Five multi jointed fingers replaced
them, in appearance each was like a tiny blue metal rod, while in behaviour
giving much the same appearance as a human hand.

At that very moment the four walls of the room began to
split cleanly apart at the four corners. Less than a second later they came crashing
down to the ground. The noise they made was ear shattering. The suits filtered
it out without missing a beat. As the dust rose, the squad reacted quickly
performing a broad spectrum scan and moving to form a defensive position behind
the two still unmoving recon members.

The lasers that had previously shot out from the walls now
crisscrossed the entire room. The ghost squad was now trapped in their
entirety. Invisible suits mattered not in this labyrinthine maze of glistening
ruby fractals.

A slight mist slowly surfaced the entire room. Rising to
obscure ground level, troop without field scanners would have been blind.
Instead each SAS trooper saw the scenery changing, as machine bays rose from
the ground.

With no pause for good theatrics the complex web of red
lasers began to shift in seemingly random patterns. Estimated time to hitting a
“ghost”? One to two seconds at best. Aimee blanched her silent observation up
until now bowling along nice with the tension. Now however things were starting
to look somewhat grimmer.

The Captain must have caught her mood, for smiling to
himself, he eye texted into the ePad general band chat room –Never fear, the SAS are here.

With anyone else it would have read cheeserly. With the good
Captain it was matter a fact. SAS never backed down.

Arms deployed from each suit once more. This time the
fingers of each hand were loaded with special mirrors. The suit computers had
calculated a group defence using just the outer three members to reflect up all
the beams intersecting the group and their path forward to the device.

Well this was true to an extent. The computer couldn’t
account for additional traps. The Captain was slowly moving his way towards the
remaining members. The two recon members plus another joined him. Together they
made their way toward what was the centre of the room.

No sooner had they progressed passed the area that was free
of the deflected laser tripwires, than three small black cylinders rose from
the ground. Each advancing trooper had his robot arm already deployed with the
laser reflector attachment. It was probably all that saved them.

With a hiss and an explosion of hot gas from the base of
each cylinder the weapons roared to life. They each shot out beams of blue
laser light, each beam was designed not to provide a low energy tripwire, but
as a high intensity stream that could cut through five inch steel plate armour.
The beams were an array of vicious photons emitting extreme heat and light. The
gases forced from the base filled the room with a bass like rumble, which
echoed out towards the buildings walls.

The men were beaten back noticeably by the onslaught. Only
the captain, being untargeted by the blue lasers was able to continue. The
others duck or dodge as they might, were barely able to lose the tracking
signature of the lasers. They could not continue any closer due to the power of
the laser cutters. In fact two of the three were being gradually forced back.
The third foolishly advanced closer, and was cut nearly in half as the laser
first overloaded the arm’s reflection mechanism then proceeded straight down
the middle of trooper’s body. The result was not pleasant. Each half fell down
to the side, the men to either side of their downed buddy yelling, “NO!!”

The laser immediately continued its deadly arc, ignoring the
advancing captain, and ganging up on the one of the two remaining members of
the recon squad. The captain looked back on his under siege unit, the man being
targeted suit would overload in seconds with the combined power of the two
laser towers.

The Captain made a decision, the mission objective was
worthless if he lost his squad achieving it. He stopped moving carefully
forward, with his active field scanner, and pivoted hard to his left towards
the nearest laser tower. The arm over his right shoulder became a crude yet
effective battering ram,as his spin
ended it spun out like a spinning back fist that had somehow started from the
middle of the back. The force of the metal hand hitting the electronic tower
was ear piercing. The metal tore apart with the first blow, the electronics
inside were shredded apart by a fist free now to tear it apart. The innards
were soon scattered in a loose wreckage around the base of the device.

The two remaining lasers must have been co-ordinated by a
CPU somewhere with multiple sensor types. The Captain had gone invisible as he
destroyed the first laser tower, but the remaining two instantly locked onto
him and began the attack. The Captain should have been destroyed. However as
the “suit” overloaded and the invisibility failed what appeared when the invisibility
faltered was not the Captain but a small device on the ground that resembled a
small turtle with metallic spider legs. Atop its back was the Captains invisibility
component, reconfigured to output the heat signature of a human. It advanced
impotently on the laser’s and was quickly cut to pieces.

Even as the lasers attacked the turtle-spider drone, the
Captain calmly marched towards the rear
of second tower. The two members of the recon squad similarly attacked the
final tower. Even as their metal fists descended on the electronic sentinels to
wreck with vengeance these killing things, each tower made desperate counter
measures. The two teams ducked quickly as a wide arc sprayed from the top of
each tower in a semi circular arc. The beams missed and the towers were quickly
destroyed.

The three men advanced on the centre of the room. A raised dais
of metal plates folding in towards the centre sat right in the middle. Around
it cables snaked over and into the middle of it. Three leather couches
decorated the outside of the large raised circle. In the middle of the dais a
red triangle vibrated. On closer inspection the leather couches were actually
computer server bays sitting horizontally and covered with leather rugs. A icey
breeze blew up from below the red triangular hatch.

The captain advanced towards the dais. “Commander Blackbear,
I assume you would like me to investigate the hatch?”

“Yes. But get a trooper to connect up to the nearest server
rack, I want to know what sort of information we can retrieve.”

“Excellent! Dusty deploy your electronic
scavenging. Go!”

Dusty moved up next to the nearest server rack and several
cables that looked like small harpoons shot out of his arms punching through
the walls of the server rack and injecting smaller cables that raced among the
motherboard architecture looking for ports and slots to connect to.

Data began to stream back to Aimee from the suit. The LU
Crystal appeared to be housed below the red triangular hatch. At least the
servers were programmed to protect an object with the same dimensions. As Aimee
continued to examine the data streaming past on her ePad an un-easy feeling
began to rise in the pit of her stomach. She changed the filter on the search
program to provide a report of the power output from the now defunct laser
stations and the supply of energy coming from the hidden recess below the dais.

As she suspected the energy readings were not consistent
with a super powerful source such as the LU crystal, but rather a more modest
set of diesel generators that appeared to be located at the rear of the
building.

“Sarge! Send one of the men over the side and take out those
two generators around the back, the rest of you haul ass downstairs to the
ground level and wait outside the entrance, for further orders.”

“Yes ma’am.” The SEAL members clipped onto a metal rappelling
hook that had been driven into the roof of the building hours earlier by
Easy-E. Sarge led the men over the edge two stories down to the ground, each
man rappelling face first at break neck speed.

Easy-E went over the opposite edge landing to one side of
the generators. Two casual shots through the sides of each metal container
disabled the machines. The hum of the engines and thick acrid smell of burning
diesel, was replaced with silence and thick oily smoke plumes. Having completed
his objective, Easy-E began to move around the perimeter of the building
looking for signs of any enemy stationed on overwatch.

The SAS inside the building were trapped. As soon as the
generators cut out, what appeared to be an emergency routine suddenly
activated. The room went pitch black then red lights came on. A siren started
to whirl noisily somewhere far from there.

The SAS were unaffected by the dark, HD night vision was
just an integrated subroutine in their suits. But what their suits were
reporting was much worse than the dark. Each member’s feet were snagged in
solid steel rings, which had clicked into place in sync with the confusion.
Additional layers of rings had engaged soon after leaving team members stuck to
the floor. The armour plates on the leg seemed to shield them, but several
suits were reporting elevated levels of integral damage.

Aimee looked down at a near holographic layout design of the
building below. Each floor was mapped in detail from the suit recon. Surprisingly
the main generators taken out by Easy, were not the most predictable place to
put them. Now that she thought about it that meant they probably weren’t the
main generators.

Aimee looked up at the night sky. As she had turned her head the rush of events
in this deadly battle had turned south, now looking down again the way forward
felt clearer. Thoughts gradually started to unwind in time to the battle. They
would get something back, if that was they got out of this mess.

“Sarge. You still at the front entrance?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m sending you co-ords for a blue beta attack.”

She looked below to the ground beyond the front of the
building, but heard rather than saw the massive blast erupt from inside. It was
a pinpoint rail strike by four warriors in perfect harmony. The shots so
closely circled that you couldn’t tell fire patterns even with the US military grade
image analysis package that displayed in their visors. The result was that the
ground just below the Dias seemed to sink and four floors below, a massive fuel
generator exploded.

The various traps disabled the SAS began to roam about
looking for a control box, and a controller. Although they suspected remote
control offsite, this level of sophistication may have required onsite
interference. The US team below had already started smashing their way in past
the dormant traps on the ground floor. Someone gave a shout from the far
corner, however by the time everyone arrived all they had was the fleeting
image of a set of legs disappearing down a sloping metal hatchway on the side
of the building. Easy-E was dispatched to investigate the area, and recorded
further footage of someone running, quickly consumed by the night and the
buildings.

Buildings and Alleys, 24:00:00, Northern Mogadishu

God! Allah! Praise is to him. But still, how did he just escape
those men? The insanity of this rush through madness was not lost on him. He
knew he must have been given some kind blessings, and he now knew his enemies
strengths. Truly today was a great day if only he could survive it. His rush
took place through a thoroughfare of various shops that seemed to spill out
from small multi storey terraces.

Through side streets and back streets, across a narrow dirt
covered strip between two buildings, now he knew little by little he was home
free. For starters he’d been moving for the last five minutes through terrain
that no spy satellite could track. On top of that the area was controlled by
loyal gangsters who would fold in around his entry, making pursuit next to
impossible. That was unless you could withstand point blank attacks from RPGs.

In this lawless zone, he was as much a commander now as a
man of science. As the scientist entered a nearby alcove a burly man, wearing a
full length robes waited for him to pass and then stepped in front of the door
blocking the passage. The scientist continued down a flight of steps inside the
small building, down into a basement section. Here he was met by a secure vault
door, with iris and fingerprint sensors embedded on the door panel. He entered
a pass code on the num pad then titled forward to complete eye and finger
authentication.

As soon as the door opened up the Guards on the other side
stepped aside to allow him access to the narrow passage way. Once inside he
would continue his work on the LU crystal. According to applications that he
knew blue tiger had installed on the LU crystal field detection servers he was
making good progress towards a connecting the LU as a power source to the grid.
He wondered though if they knew how good that progress really was. He estimated
he would have a window of two to three weeks before they realised the project
was complete. More than enough time.

Outskirts of Mogadishu Refugee camp, 18:35:25, Beyond the city walls of
Mogadishu.

Aimee realised they had made good time, when she looked at
her watch. Twenty eight minutes to the edge of the huge camp site that sprawled
alongside the city proper. As with all such impoverished arrangements, the
majority of living quarters were in various states of disrepair. The people of
this place walked slowly, their old clothes belying a down trodden existence,
of daily subsistence living.

They didn’t look out of place. Minutes earlier each team member had donned
extra layers of “urban camouflage”. Old clothes placed strategically gave a gun
toting bad boy the look of a chubby farmer. Head clothes and arm wraps
disguised tight fitting helmets and comms bracelets.

The rendezvous point was at the other end of the camp. A contact would be
waiting with two cars.

As they walked amongst the squalid conditions of the camp, they could not help
but notice the shambolic state of its inhabitants. Poor farmers from the south,
driven wild by the desperations of living under a nihilist movement. Al Shabab
made you give your heart to god, and your gold to them. Like cutthroats
throughout history they hid behind whatever social truths were available, in
this case religion. The reality, that hundreds of thousands of subsistence
farmers were now starving.

One in two of the population. An awful statistic, until you saw the awfully
awfuller truth in front of you. Truth lay somewhere out there in the great
camp. Amongst the people with their skin hanging and their bones weakened. The
hollow looks and desperate gazes looking in vain for salvation. That silent
plea, for something, anything. The burden of a generation born unto abject
poverty.

These are a people who are refugees in their own country, too hungry to feed
their own children, thought Aimee. Sadness flooded her mind. She was a
professional and held to the objectives and parameters of her mission plan.
Still she was a human and the unbearable pain of these times made their mark on
her.

A small Somalian women hobbled up to them, she wouldn’t have been more than
twenty eight, already driven old by hard living, “Are you the one I pray for
every night? Help me! Save me!”

She tried to push closer, noticing the rigid looks of the soldiers for the
first time. Each having been trained, they looked straight ahead rather than
engage her eyesight. It was left to Aimee to push the women to the side of
their path. Pressing a small bundle of food into her hands, she whispered, “May
god heal your pain sister.” [In Somalian]

The lady gave up with a sullen disgruntled look at her new found source of
food, wandering back towards the line of tents.

The two man squad of SAS, codenamed “Tunnel Rats”, jumped in one car with the
contact, they would be driven past checkpoints stationed with friendly guards
to the start of the entrance to the tunnel. The rest of the team, codenamed
“Death Angels”, moved into the second car and sped off in another direction,
towards the north east of the city.

Old Power Station Sub-basement 2, 15:30:30, City of Mogadishu.

The scientist carefully pulled back the stick of explosives,
wrapping the wire tightly around the detonator, before pushing it very firmly
back into the Plastique. He moved with the experience of someone for whom the
deadly secrets of chemical engineering were second nature. The scientist was a
man of true intelligence if somewhat lacking in a corresponding degree of
ethical behaviour to control his fertile mind.Once when he was five he had almost destroyed the family home mixing a
couple of household cleaning agents. Ever since then his parents and insisted
he pursue a career in science. Looking back now it seemed almost as though fate
had had a guiding hand in ensuring a once in a generational mind was put to
good use.

The lack of clear specific goal early in his life, and a desire to do more than
just write research papers, had once again conspired to point his younger self
down roads less travelled. In fact it was while studying abroad for his 3rd
PhD in as many years that the scientist met the first of a group of radicals
that would guide his path for the next twenty years to come. His good friend
through college Hasseem Al Haqua had introduced him to a Mullah who believed in
true freedom for North Africans.

Always there was one more mission to complete for Al Qaeda,
for the Turkish underground, the Syrian brotherhood, the Muslim brotherhood, Hamas,
Al Aqsa brigade. A never ending pipeline of desperate cells all needing the
genius of a man who had no scruples. Or so they had all thought. Some bombs
didn’t explode, other exploded early, but always in a way that left his masters
in no uncertain terms that those carrying the weapon had been at fault. Of
course there was never going to be much evidence, or if there was it would
usually end up in the hands of the authorities.

The scientist knew his one true shield was his anonymity. He
had used all of his impress brain power to construct an elaborate scheme of
proxies both physical and web based. The channels for communicating with him were
complicated indeed. After every job he naturally assumed his existing network
was completely compromised and rebuilt it from scratch. The efforts were not
cheap but the results spoke for themselves. The authorities weren’t even sure
if he was African. No name, no details, no birth of origin, no list of friends
(he had none), no family or political allegiances. He was a ghost in the
machine of life.

Getting up from a crouch he mentally checked his
preparations. Everything was in readiness. The strange Chinese in his black
ninja garb had been very specific. At seven o’clock all hell would break
loose.The foreigners wanted their LU
crystal back. It was not possible. It was a gift from Allah to his people.
After a lifetime of carrying out other people’s orders, the Scientist had been
given the ultimate means of saving Somalia from the crippling effects of
starvation and civil war.

He just needed the time to design and build. For now he had
to collaborate with the Chinese. They were a necessary partner. Al Shabab however
was a necessary evil, the sooner they were destroyed the better he thought. The
government were no better. The forces would feud and meld. Ultimately a
solution would emerge for a united Somalia, one with the economic power to rise
above the quagmire of challenges that held it back.

The Scientist moved on throughout the sub basements looking
at each trap. Checking each tripwire, the power circuits, the position of the
device. Nothing escaped his attention; his hallmark was the meticulous nature
of his planning. He had never failed.

Checkpoint Alpha, 18:35:25, Inside the city walls of
Mogadishu.

The two SAS soldiers began removing the outer layer of rags almost as soon as
they entered the car. Disguises would be useless. If the guards at each
checkpoint weren’t paid off, a careful visual inspection would quickly reveal
they were not African or starving. It mattered not.

Through each checkpoint they breezed, never stopping for a
soldiers head through the door, just the lining of pockets and the slack style
of talk that preceded such bribery. Soon the car was in position to unload its
cargo. The two SAS warriors running as soon as their feet hit the ground,
moving swiftly through a nearby back alley to stand at the start of a rough
concrete hold that formed the entrance to the tunnel.

The smell of the brackish water and associated filth would have been considered
overpowering to most. Each step taken was a step into an ever rising stench of
shit. Two steps would, or rather should have induced a near fatal reaction.
Certainly the human nostril was not designed for an assault of this degree. For
the two SAS it was barely worthy of any attention other than as a guide to the
age of the tunnel, or their relative location to sources of danger.

Their suits were already performing spectral analysis of the various chemicals
in the tunnel. Nothing came up dangerous. Next the suits combined their full
spectrum sweep coverage to work over half the tunnel each. Each member of the
SAS team was able to review the results of the completed analysis in real time.
The suits internal LED retina displays, revealed what they had collectively suspected,
that a multitude of traps existed even in the tunnel leading up to the entrance
of sub basement level 2. Each source of explosives was marked by a small red
circle, a rotating internal arrow indicating the direction of the electronic
detonator.

Working forward carefully and efficiently the two man team
approached each trap meticulously. They were all the same. Laser tripwires
acted as the trigger points, while semtex provided the disincentive. The suits
were pretty cool, having detected the lasers; they were capable of feeding in a
dummy signal to prevent the device triggering. This then allowed the team
valuable time to disarm the device. Each suit had a mini-robotic arm that popped
from the left shoulder blade area. The tiny tri fingered maniples made small
delicate movements such as disabling a bomb much easier, whilst the inbuilt
laser cutter made pinpoint destruction of the internal electronics a snap.

At the entrance they looked back, the LED displays
registering 10 laser triggered bombs disabled. There was little hope of most
people getting through ok. The bombs had been placed in the obscurity of
darkness, triggered from ten feet out by a multitude of laser lines. Even the
dude from mission impossible would have struggled without one of these suits.
Which led to an interesting point. Did they know about this latest tech? Surely
not, so that meant they really did have something worth protecting up top. Each
man came to the conclusion at the same time Aimee said to them over the encrypted
comms link, “Gamma Foxtrot, you are clear to engage with primary objective,
proceed with caution. These guys are serious about keeping their secrets, go
smoke ‘em out!”

“Yes, ma’am” they repeated in unison.

Gary “Dusty” Tikehurst and Paul “Lion Tamer” Laverty,
adjusted their assault rifles, the inbuilt laser targeting giving instant
feedback to the right eye retina display of Dusty, and the left eye of the
lefty lion tamer. Each man approached the large metal door cautiously. Doors
were by virtue of their nature, the perfect place to booby trap, necessitating
as they did an enemy to open them. The suits reported heat sensors deployed
along the door handle, no doubt with a failsafe pressure gauge placed under the
foot of the door itself.

A metallic arm extended out and grasped the door handle,
tugging it gently open. The other man was already on his knees in front of the
opening. Sure enough electric wires ran from a hidden pressure plate up the
inside frame to a narrow hole halfway up the door hinge. The wires were intercepted
by the second arm, which first held the cabling aloft then clamped and sutured
it with the laser cutter. Finally a new dummy emitter was soldered onto the “live
end” of the wire. The entire operation to disable the device had taken less
than ten seconds.

Each man stepped through the gap carefully, already dialling
up the spectral analysis within the sub basement. The team perched above on the
enchanted blue roof of the power station, pooled their collective skills now to
provide distributed analysis of the best way to deal with each individual bomb.
The other SAS suits now acted as localised data processing units. The suits
found only devices on this level similar to those found in the tunnel. Each was
easily dismantled in rapid succession. The two man team proceeded rapidly
through the sub basement to a grubby shadowed set of stairs that ran one flight
up to the upper basement level. Before proceeding further analysis was
completed.

Dusty muttered, “Just as well Mr Lion Tamer”
His LED retina display showed more lasers on the upper part of the stairwell.
At least two more bombs with pressure pads placed on different steps.

Paul smiled back at his mate Dusty. It was a running joke that the largest most
formidable hand to hand fighter in the squad had once come face to face with a
lion in the mountains of Syria and lived to tell the tale. To this day he kept
the skin on display but refused to say, how, armed only with a knife he had bested
it. Only a deep scar that cut across his upper chest bore any testimony to that
day of life and death.

The lion tamer pushed down onto his belly and slithered
forward. Using elbows and knees he got to within a short distance of the first
laser tripwire, and deployed the robotic arm. Dusty watched from below
monitoring the activity of the first bomb. Suddenly he detected a change.
Another type of sensor they had missed? There was no time! Immediately he
deployed his own arm albeit in a somewhat different configuration. The arm
extended... with a small mace looking attachment in place of the three fingered
hand. Then at full extension, the arm released the mace weapon which shot out
towards the position of the first bomb, trailing a small metal chain linked
cord as it did so.

The small device with the club like design hit the part of the wall that was
partially hiding the bomb. Plasterboard and wood had been partially torn out
just enough to hide what was inside. It didn’t matter. Anyone sent to
investigate would have been long dead before they got anywhere near that
section of the wall. As soon as the device made impact it seemed to pop up
three small metallic nodules from around the circumference of its head. Each one
glowed blue, then the device released a strange whirring noise. Like a
mini-turbine, this was the crucial pre-load stage, the electricity from the
suits invisibility generator re-routed along the metal cord to the device. Less
than half a second later the device emitted an ear piercing whine! A tiny
localised EMP field was the result. Too small to effect either man’s suit it
was nether the less powerful enough to knock out both of the bombs on the
stairwell and the surrounding lighting.

The pitch blackness was soothing to the small squad. They
trooped up the stairs in the quiet darkness, eyes long since taking in the view
from their passive field scanners. It was bizarre, but SAS had consistently
found during testing that night ops made the suits easier to handle, primarily
because the volume of retina based information did not have to be reconciled
with a naked interpretation of reality. Everything was soo much clearer in
shades of green when you were British.

The second basement level was the same as the first. The
only difference was they now had to work their way back in the opposite
direction to the main stairwell on the other side of the floor. They moved
forward, starting to listen to any tell tale signs of other humans. Breathing, talk
or footsteps; the audio analysis was running constant background checks that
could do pickups from two hundred metres away. Dusty looked over at his mate.
This was going to be a long slow day, with more surprises than a nasty day in
hell fooken guaranteed.

The Kimberly Ranges, Midday, Far North Western Australia

Cub stares over at Bear... woo00oo wooah!

Bear just stares back. Wtf is Cub doing?

Cub gets up and looks around.

“Yarnyum Gianarma tribe land. This is a sacred site. We are
the first white people to see it.”

Cub smiled secretively to himself, while Bear sniggered at
him and said.

“Is that what your Aussie spirit tells you Cub? That we are
in some super remote fucking part of Western Australia? I’ll tell you exactly
where we are, without any GPS wristwatch.”

Cub smiled back at him, “Where?”

“The middle of the fucking Kimberly Cub. We are as far from civilisation as it
is possible to be and remain on dry land. Luckily for us, it’s not the wet
season. We may still have a chance of survival.”

Cub began to shiver uncontrollably. Immediately Bear hugged
his brother, as he too was overtaken by wracking shakes. Both look past the others
right shoulder, catching glints of shadow in the dawn.
Each man knew the reality. This place, because of its remoteness and the in
hospitability of terrain, was completely unsurvivable.

They had been trained by some of Australia’s greatest
trackers to survive. They would need all their skills. The first one was energy
conversation and getting better. There were plants; they also needed meat
quickly to avoid toxicification from the nanites that were now circulating
through their blood streams.

When they had been re-corporealerised, the physical forms
required the briefest contact with the other realm. At transfer the exposure
tarnished them, causing the weakness. It would pass, but each knew that could
be measured in years. There was one catch though, as surely as there always was
in life. If you could flush the nanites quickly enough they wouldn’t get a hold
and do as much damage. Recovery then could be in days, as the body fought of
the vestiges of what had already been done.

Flushing nanites required consuming roughly a third of your bodyweight in
protein, and the quickest way to do that in the wild was, hunting and eating
animals. But first they needed energy. It was no good tracking if you couldn’t
move properly. They were like recently arrived astronauts. Weak from space,
desperate to renormalise to earth’s conditions.

Each moved off after a further minute, in exactly opposite
directions from the cave mouth, having decided that this would be their base
camp. The men soon found loose branches and bent to making a sharpened leading
edge. No second was spared for fashion, only killing potential was considered.
Each knew that any attempt at this point to use chi for pyrokenesis or what the
westerners called using your mind-force-chi-spirit to control the elementals
such as fire. Any attempt could or at least would eventually lead to permanent
death.

They had been lucky, it was best not to push it, when you
got your life’s back.

The two ninja adepts, stepped through the portal of
darkness. Night descended into that pit, sharp noises and howls of ghoulish
proportion roamed and echoed. Each ninja dressed head to foot in black wraps,
most of which concealed ancient and modern weapons.

Both were fully grown cold eyed fellows. Each carried a
large blade in hand. One was slightly and an inch or two shorter, seemed to
move with the grace of a women. The adepts leaned into the black sphere’s
entrance chancing forward to the void.

The edges of the sphere collapsed crackling with arcane
purple lightning bolts. This was the magic of the Ancient Master. His wizened
wizardly form appeared even now urging them on through the portal. They quickly
made landfall, hurling themselves from the crackling-frozen surface of clouds
back into reality. Immediately the portal winked out of existence.

Landfall was a set of bushes deep in the vast jungle of...
the Kimberley Ranges in far north W.A. So said the device on the left arms of
each adept. The female adept stepped forward silently looking back at her male
companion. Each had deployed non reflective silver wraparound shades.

The male adept suddenly hold out his left hand in a complex
triangle symbol. A faint red glow emanated. A fine mist formed rushing outwards
from his palm. The female blew on to it, and another red mist shot out creating
two dots on across a large topographical map. The map features seemed to shift
and alter like those in a dream. They are near that cave, it was a gesture that
conveyed a statement from the male to the female. Two sets of eyes when red with
power chi. Each adept was now measuring the distance to the kill sight in
physical kilometres, preparing their bodies to unleash the devastating psi
attacks they had been taught, as well as a vast array of standard weaponry
should such an attack vector prove necessary.

The adepts ran with smooth efficiency. Each strode in close
fitting but comfortable black mesh. The ninja blades were retained in micro
sheaths on their backs. The secret of their clan was stamina. They could run
for days if necessary. One of the secrets. Now that most of the other clans
were broken or missing they carried many secrets. Like how to get a man to
vault over ten feet, keep warm in a blizzard or see long distances underwater.

As they closed on the two targets they formed a mental bond
wall, and reviewed strategy. Each posted ideas for potentially improving the
odds on killing one target by effectively favouring the other thus causing that
target to act overly offensively. Ultimately though the o.g. strategy of simply
going one on one, and trying to use the element of assassination if possible was
key. In fact you could say the ancient master almost didn’t want his targets to
be potentially taken out early by crafty ninjas in the night. He wanted these
two humiliated, after the triumph they had endured in forcing him into
seclusion in the mountains in china.

In addition to run power-chi circuits every forty seconds to
keep muscles on standby, each adept fed chi into an active psi trap relay on
their blades. This “red energy” accumulated slowly and let them deliver deadly
psi chain attacks that could knock out victims, making them easy prey.

Cub and Bear come back in to the sacred site. They are deep
in the Kimberley, thousands of kilometres from anyone. Wet season or no, even so
it will take all their tracking skills just to survive. And they are weak from
their journey. They know what is coming. They have seen the adepts that were
sent to kill them. Being pure spiritual beings they can see their karma.

Each is currently gorging on the last edible piece of a
massive wild boar. The gods have been kind. A plentiful sacrifice for coming
back. A gift from god, fate, destiny, or good luck. They had expected nothing
and had twin boars present from the first thicket. Sensing closure Cub had
grabbed Bears spear from his left carrying hand and hurled it right handed at
the left board. Then seeing the wild rush of the escape, he made the judgement
to chance his left arm, hurling his own homemade spear at the beast on the
right.

They have finished eating the cooked insides of the second
carcass, feeling fat and bloated from so much red meat. The nanites are sated.
Now it was as though chains had loosened and they could... React! Quickly each
man hurled himself from the scene of wanton gluttony. No sooner were they each
combat rolling in opposite directions than black blades burning with red mist
slashed through the spaces they had been.

An oddity then that saved them. Cub had heard a faint twitch
in the darkness. Not an adept crunching leaf underfoot, but that of a wombat
bashing through the foliage. Whatever saves you was meant to be. Cub was coming
out of the roll jumping into the air seeming to almost fly; the female adept
followed.

Bear stood from his roll, roaring defiantly with his voice.
The male adept leaned back as though temporarily overcome, then walked forward
swinging his blade from side to side. The swirling motion of the tip made tiny
circles from the red the mist. The eyes of the ninja were now leaking with a
faint red glow that seemed to trail for several inches behind him. The adept
twirled on the spot swinging his blade out wide. It made a wicked arc out in
front. Having brought his body into a tightly heeled circle, the adept now
stepped onto his right leg and chopped down from the three hundred sixty degree
circle toward Bear’s knees. He stepped back nimbly.

Bear roared a second time. The adept was frozen, as he
stepped inside the blade’s range, delivering closed fists directly to the side
of the ninja’s body. Whack, whack, smack. The blows fell like the blows, of a
particularly nasty and vicious claw hammer.

The adept was knocked back, recovering straight away, he
advanced once more. Bear felt the first moment of wonder. Back in the day when
he had been Davis’s age, that punch would have knocked Mohammed Ali into next
week, now it barely kept him in the fight.

The sword was cutting through the end at Cub once more. He
rolled backwards into a defensive crouch. Without taking her burning red eyes
from him, the ninja pulled a brace of shuriken from her vest and threw them at
him. Her arm shot forward from two metres away, Cub jumped, just, gracefully
into the air, somersaulting over the top of her attack.

More shuriken followed, now Cub was running. In a circle
trying to outflank her. She twisted in time to everything he did. The small
barbed pieces of steel barely missed him now. Speed is not your ally anymore my
friend, Cub said to himself. The adept stepped in cutting downwards with the
blade. He dodged to the left and the blade instead cut down the middle of a
tree trunk, treating it like soft butter. He waited till the adept was just
about to pull free of the trunk, then kicked out with all his might. As he
thought even though the weapon was like a turkey carver for trees and humans,
it still got stuck in the base of the tree. He followed up with a second snap
kick to the adepts hand and then to her shoulder.

He reached inside the void, pooled all his strength, and it
was like a baby lifting itself to stand. Like the tiniest speck of power had
decided to flow. He knew what he wanted to do, but the days of meditation
required to regain control of that flow were currently beyond him. Even so the
barest skerrick of power existed. Just for that second it seemed.

As the saying goes it’s not how much you have its how you
use it. Cub was doing just that. He used his tiny connection to bend the thread
that curled air around the female adept’s right foot. Samsara enforced the
intent of the universe via the laws of physics. Cub changed that instance to
enforce the laws of Cub. Tiny wisps of air became steel, for a bare half
second, but it was enough. The foot tripped, the adept fell forward off
balance.

Cub knew now that a crucial junction had been reached. Both
adepts were instantly aware of the use of power on the local threads of
samsara. How could they not?

Everything in the universe was connected.
There are not those things now that reflect what I want but those things that
matter more now that they are gone? What do you want Davis? What for you is
still permanent in this place of non-existence? – Cub questioning Davis, 5
seconds before hisinitiation began.

The female adept’s loss of balance was all he needed.
Stepping in he grabbed her neck, breaking it swiftly in hands that were even in
this weakened state still strong than most forms of steel. In such life and
death battles there was no extended fight sequence. Just a loss of advantage,
followed most usually by a swift and brutal ending.

Cub rounded on the fighters in front of him, advancing
swiftly to within striking range. A furious exchange of punch, chop, and block
was going on, and his brother was starting to flag badly. A peerless fighter in
his own right, Bear was however slower and more vulnerable in his current physical
state. The adept was holding nothing back. Using mind power to focus his
attacks, he launched punches that could tear through brick walls, and blocks
that must have felt like iron bars.

Still Bear fought on through gritted teeth. His pain was obvious,
but then again so was his courage. Like drops of water, the blood from his many
wounds now dropped freely towards the ground.Beaten back by an advancing enemy, Bear suddenly stiffened, even as a
fatal blow descended. The ninja adept had unleashed a cruelling blow, using a
chi push to temporarily block Bear upper vertebrae, an instant cause of body
paralysis.

Cub screamed forward, jumping onto the back of the remaining
adept. His body was locked like a lover on the adept from behind, moving his
arms up and in front of the adepts body, holding him in a full nelson. The
ninja strained clearly not used to having to fight off such a wiry yet
impossibly strong man as Cub. Like a UFC fighter at the top of his BJJ prowess,
Cub twisted and turned to counter everything the other fighter had. Bear looked
on silently fighting the paralysis, willing his body to get back into the
fight. What should of taken seconds to recover from, what should not have even
been possibly to inflict in the first place was in fact an attack for which to
Bear had almost proven fatal.

I believe I will conqueror fear. You will fear the thing you
come to like the most, yourself. Then you will grow to distrust your own
shadow, and when you at last become that shadow? Cub hummed in the ninja’s ear,
and as he had predicted the adept thrashed to the other side with his head...
straight into Cub’s upraised elbow smashing back in the other direction.
Knocked by the blow but not unconscious Cub quickly used the advantage to once
again snap the neck of his opponent.

He let the body drop to the ground, and walked over to his
brother. Blood streamed from his wounds as Cub grabbed his arms and gently
pressed subtle chi energies along the spine every few inches. The key to
quickly restoring the body for one untrained or unable to wield their own chi,
was to use small pushes that gradually brought the chi to the surface of the
main channel letting it flow again. Everything was just blocks and flow. Press
in the right place and you could kill a man in less than ten seconds.

Cub caught Bear as his body suddenly went limb and slumped..
some seconds later Bear was groggily raising himself. He looked disbelieving at
his younger brother.

“You saved me brother! My little brother saved my life! How
will I ever live down the embarrassment?” Bear said still disbelieving. He felt
keenly the humiliation of allowing the adept to paralyse him.

Cub just smiled warmly at his brother. They had been through
too much, put up with too much, done everything together, to worry too much
about Bear’s emotional state. Besides they were baby boomers, life wasn’t
fucken fair, you worked hard, then maybe if you were lucky you got to go on
holidays before you died. What his brother felt now, was his own way of saying
thank you, in a way that neither of them could or would ever tacitly
acknowledge. Such was the way of men, to share without talking, to say through
action what was only confused in the tongue of man.

I am the alpha, I am the omega. Hadn’t god said that? Yes
but man had never realised quite where things really began. One day Cub had
been curious and asked Bear to come along on a trip to Thailand. It was a
journey that would, some twenty years later lead here. I have seen the end
thought Cub,I know where I will return.
It filled him with an amazing sense of purpose. The energy of that place was
something unto which there was nothing similar at all on the earth. The land of
the living dead, the place that souls go to wait.

Cub nodded slowly at Bear. Bear nodded back. It was going to
be a long trek, perhaps in a few days they would be strong enough to tele-link
with one of the tribal elders of the far north, to ask for a pickup. First they
had to get stronger, and even then there were not many of the old ones left. Western
ways had cut and insidious path through the culture of this countries proud
guardians. The young had lost interest in the waysof their fathers. The great dream, that held
Australia in its midst. The spirit which without most people’s knowledge gave
it the true moniker of “the lucky country” was slowly fading.

Cub looked back around at the bodies of the two adepts
thinking they could scavenge clothes and perhaps some food. Instead he
instantly went into a defensive crouch. Bear was soon in front of him, hurling
forwards at the two re-animated puppets in front of them. Each moved more
rigidly as if pulled by a master puppeteer, yet each still just as deadly. The
chi enhanced swords swung in deadly precise arcs towards each man. Now loosened
from the restriction of pain the adepts became deadly whirlwinds of non-stop
attack and destruction. Cub ducked picking up two heavy stones and handed one
to Bear. Raising their right hands each man threw the heavy stone with all his
might. Cub’s one skimmed past the male adepts blade landing a blow smack into
the bridge of the nose, cracking the head back. The adept stepped forward its
head rolled back at an obscene angle. Bear’s one was deadly accurate from less
than one metre it crashed into the shoulder of the female adept causing a
compound fracture that left the collarbone hanging loosely.

The adepts seemed to cackle madly! If this was fun, I’d hate
to think what they didn’t like, thought Cub even as he knew that they must be
already dead. This was all part of the sinister ancient master’s bag of tricks.
How he would be furious that he had failed to kill them. Cub was suddenly
worried, he thought he had seen this trap before. He grabbed Bear and began to
run away into the bush beyond. They had made perhaps two or three hundred
metres on the slow moving puppet adepts, when suddenly a wild and unholy roar
ripped through the jungle. A massive fireball had erupted behind them, but for
them it seemed the first sign were intense waves of heat burning down their
backs.

A second later and they were hurled forward by a blast wave.
Close enough to feel the rush of compressed air forced out from ground zero.
Close enough to stand amongst the crashing trees as the whole jungle floor was
desiccated by the explosion. Singed now, burnt and weary from the fight of a
life just after a journey back from the beyond the grave, each man lay down to
sleep the sleep of the dead. No dreaming for a long time, this time, it would
be a small time still each thought before either of the two dreamers dreamed
again.